Today's data networks are becoming increasingly complex to meet the growing needs of users. Sophisticated data networks collect data, store data, analyze data, present data to users, etc., so that a user of this data may make informed decisions. Frequently, these tasks need to be carried out on more than one platform. Therefore, processing is distributed across many platforms (processors) in the network. In this context, a data client and the client's desired service platform may be one, two or several processors in the network.
XML provides a convenient mechanism for representing calls from a client application to a service application. It is simple to use, precise, flexible, portable and allows exchange of such requests between diverse applications, running on diverse platforms. An example of such an interface is the SOAP protocol (specified at: http://www.w3c.org/TR/2003/PR-soap-part0-20030507/). The SOAP specification essentially considers data packaged inside a request. The SOAP specification is mainly concerned with constraining the structure of the SOAP message.
However, SOAP cannot provide new functionality without changing the operational programs of client applications and service applications, especially if the applications are on distributed processors. Therefore, a problem in the art is that there is no simple method to specify new functionality that may potentially affect distributed data processing systems.